Can You Help With Patient Billing?

Whilst we can’t issue or manage physical bills for you, we can help with the process.

We can help you accept online and mobile payments through a payment link, using a service like Stripe. Read more at https://anaestheticgroup.com.au/help/patient-pre-anaesthetic-payments/

In addition, we can help you streamline your billing process. Read on to find out more.

Our Free Online Billing Form

No longer do you have to manually stick a patient sticker onto a billing form, or hand-write operation details. Our systems are much more automated and accountable, using our new online billing form to complete these steps for you.

Our billing form is currently in beta-testing. As such, it’s not offered as standard on all plans yet. However if you’re on a paid plan, you can request to join the beta group, free of charge.

Join the Billing Form Beta Group

The new billing form will transform your billing process in the following ways:

  • You enter your billing form online, to send it to your billing service – no stamps, no faxes, and no scanning
  • The form is secure like our other forms
  • The form is mobile friendly, and was designed for mobile use
  • Billing can be completed on the move, and you can process a single patient or dozens at once
  • You can request favourites, to make future billing forms quicker to process
  • You can use the available ‘Item Number Assistant’, or choose to manually enter item numbers
  • You can view reminders, and prompts on things to charge for, like modifiers
  • A copy can also be sent to your email address, and / or a dedicated email address, for reconciliations
  • If your billing service has a query about the form, they can easily reply to you and you’ll know the full details of the bill
  • The form is secure and easy to search later, when also sent to your main email address
  • The form is user-friendly and designed to ensure you get paid faster.

Why did we make a billing form?

As many of you are aware, Anaesthetic Group is run by Lana – an Anaesthetist’s wife. New features are generally added when we see a need, problem, or an inefficiency in his practice, or that of our members. Once these solutions are tested on him, they’re then released to the rest of our members, to help you save time too.

Also, many of you also know that after 15 years as a general manager and business owner, Lana has a passion for efficiency and automation. Her mantra was always “a sale is not a sale until it gets paid”. The same principle applies to your work; there’s little point anaesthetising if you’re not getting paid, and promptly.

Billing is one of the key stages in your practice. It’s also, sadly, the one that can be hardest, the most frustrating, and the most tiresome.

This new billing form was, quite simply, created to help get you paid.

How does the new billing process compare to a traditional one?

Before the billing form was created, billing was a very manual process. For Lana’s husband, it looked very much like this:

  1. Power up the printer, and print off a specific A4 billing sheet
  2. Make sure he keeps a spare sticker for each patient
  3. When he has time, a desk to write on, a pen, and his monthly notebook, start billing
    • Affix the relevant patient sticker to the billing sheet
    • Handwrite, next to it, the operation details, times, and item numbers, taking care to ensure its legible enough for the billing service
    • Make small notes on the side, to ensure the billing service sends the bill ASAP, or to tell them they were prepaid, etc.
    • Repeat the process for all patients from that month until complete, or until he needs to print more billing sheets
  4. Locate a fax machine, and fax the billing sheets to his billing service, or keep the forms safe until he finds one
  5. Once a month, quarter, or whenever he finds time, tackle the account reconciliations
    • Locate where he placed the billing sheets
    • File them in an order that seems logical
    • Check the patient has paid
    • Identify any patients who haven’t paid, check they were invoiced, and instruct the billing service to chase up unpaid invoices
    • Identify any bills which weren’t invoiced, and contact the billing service to issue the invoice
    • Identify any patients for whom the billing service didn’t receive your billing sheet, and establish when the fax was sent
    • For any billing sheet faxes which failed to reach the billing service, decide if it’s too late to send a bill, and write the money off if you’ve left it too long.

Does the above sound familiar? This is the process Lana’s husband followed for many many years, until she had an idea. Her billing idea coincided with her offering to handle his account reconciliations for him. She saw too many manual steps and potential problems.

It also took far too long. It wasn’t possible for him to pick up and put down as convenient. More importantly, patients weren’t being billed promptly enough. There had to be a better way. So, we made one.

How does the new method work?

Here’s how our new billing form works:

  1. On your mobile phone, visit your dedicated, secure, billing form link. (This can be done anywhere you have mobile reception and a few minutes to yourself, such as public hospital days, or whilst waiting for patients)
    • Take a photo of the patient’s sticker in your notebook
    • Select the date, and use the billing assistant to help choose item numbers, use pre-saved ‘favourites’, or manually enter your own
    • Enter fee information, tick any special notes, or write your own
    • Click submit
    • You’ll see a reference number – write this down with the sticker in your notebook, so you know where you’re up to
    • The form is instantly sent to your billing service – You can also set the service up to forward a copy to a spare billing email address, for reconciliations;
  2. For reconciliation:
    • Next time you have time, check your banking and see a patient deposit, go into the spare billing email account, and check the total corresponds to the bill. Tag the email if it’s only part paid. If it’s paid in full, archive the billing form
    • Each email includes the patient surname and operation date, so you can easily check who is still outstanding, and needs to be followed up on
    • Tag any emails that concern you
    • Forward any emails to your billing service, to check the status of the payment
    • Enjoy the rest of your day!

Billing should be easy.

Testing our billing form is free for all paid members. Email us here to request to join our beta group and see how much time and frustration it can save you.